OAKBROOK TERRACE, Ill. -

Even before the recent used-car supply changes, dealers were increasingly turning to a variety of channels to acquire wholesale inventory.

And these days, the “buy anywhere” approach is of paramount importance as traditional wholesale sources have limited supply.

With that in mind, vAuto has launched ProfitTime’s Global Acquisition tool, which is designed to help dealers optimize their inventory sourcing strategies from non-traditional channels.

“Acquiring inventory is the No. 1 challenge facing dealers today, and will be for some time to come,” vAuto founder and Cox Automotive executive vice president Dale Pollak said in a news release.

“High wholesale costs and limited supply have forced dealers to adopt ‘buy anywhere’ sourcing strategies that go beyond auctions and trade-in channels to acquire inventory,” Pollak said. “The problem is that this pivot puts dealership appraisers and buyers in unfamiliar territory. They must now acquire cars across a wider number of sourcing channels, where opportunities and risks are different, at a time when the market won’t forgive buying the wrong car or paying too much.”

Global Acquisition is part of the new ProfitTime Global Profitability Solution. It aims to help dealers build an “investment value-based acquisition strategy” for appraisers and buyers that’s specifically designed for the variety of wholesale channels out there. That would include auction, trade-in, dealer-to-dealer platform, off-lease, buying from consumers off the street or in service lane, and more.

It is designed to recommend an acquisition price and retail asking price when the car is appraised.

It aims to help dealers acquire a car profitable in three ways.

First, through helping dealers strategize. Global Acquisition enables a dealer to build an acquisition strategy that considers the unique risks and opportunities in a given channel.

Second, there is a dashboard with the tool that provides a picture of how effective the appraiser and their appraisal process are in terms of meeting the dealership’s goal. It displays the vehicles sourced through each channel, whether or not they were purchased as part of the strategy and why, along with their performance as retail vehicles.

Lastly, Global Acquisition is designed to help dealers optimize each sourcing channel.

“Dealers can optimize their volume and gross performance based on where they purchase vehicles and through optimizing the performance of their appraisers,” Pollak said. “Global Acquisition is like nothing else available in the industry today.”

Randy Kobat, who is Cox Automotive’s vice president of inventory management solutions, said in the release: “As we've always said at vAuto, ‘you make money when you buy a car, not when you sell it.’ This has never been truer than in today’s volatile pre-owned vehicle market. Global Acquisition answers the call of dealerships struggling to build an inventory stream that is poised for profitability and growth.”